Some embodiments described herein relate generally to organization of network resources, and more particularly to hierarchical configuration files providing network configuration information with inheritance.
Known network fabric systems often include one or more peripheral processing devices, access switches, multi-stage switch fabrics, or other hardware and/or software resources. Many such network fabric systems often also include a number of configuration settings associated with the physical and/or logical entities included in the network fabric systems. For example, a network fabric system may include one or more configuration files associated with one or more access switches, route reflectors, virtual machines, virtual local area networks (VLANs), or other resources included in the network fabric system. In network fabric systems containing a large number of network resources, the amount of physical memory necessary to store these configuration files can result in cost and scaling constraints that impose limitations on network growth and performance. Thus, a need exists for methods and apparatus to minimize the amount of physical memory used to store configuration information associated with one or more resources included in a network fabric system.